'Eleos' was the ancient Greek personification of mercy.
Now it is also the title of a creative non-fiction thriller set against the backdrop of the 1961 Eichmann trial, that relates in lurid, gruesome detail the similarities between the infamous Armenian and Jewish genocides of the 20th century that were allowed to happen barely 25 years apart.
The plot of this multi-stranded tale hinges on one Jewish Holocaust survivor asking another to trace the Nazi SS officer who rescued him from certain death and so deserves to be included in the Yad Vashem Museum Righteous Among the Nations.
One never stops learning. So as a British child of the early fifties, many of the historical events mentioned read like urecognised
markers of my own girlhood.
Butt what caught me short was the evident resentment nurtured by some native-born Israelis towards those who survived the Shoah, either for an assumed lack of resistance to the Nazis or their enforced work in the camp crematoria and as kapos (camp trustees). Is this why many ageing survivors in Israel now live their declining years in penury, despite having borne witness to what happened?
Butt what caught me short was the evident resentment nurtured by some native-born Israelis towards those who survived the Shoah, either for an assumed lack of resistance to the Nazis or their enforced work in the camp crematoria and as kapos (camp trustees). Is this why many ageing survivors in Israel now live their declining years in penury, despite having borne witness to what happened?
In retrospect, it is clear that many other citizens of immediate post-independent Israel felt that they resided in a third world country; that a restricted job market, a poor standard of living and worries about children facing enforced IDF conscription pushed them back into the Diaspora.
Sadly, it also appears with the benefit of modern hindsight that survivor guilt is not only a psychosis. It may also be something brutally thrust upon one group by others who cannot begin to fathom an existence that remains incomprehensible to anyone who has never lived on ‘Planet Auschwitz’. There, we are told, a skewed and aberrant morality applied.
Sadly, it also appears with the benefit of modern hindsight that survivor guilt is not only a psychosis. It may also be something brutally thrust upon one group by others who cannot begin to fathom an existence that remains incomprehensible to anyone who has never lived on ‘Planet Auschwitz’. There, we are told, a skewed and aberrant morality applied.
Again, I previously knew nothing of events like the 1954 Scorpions Pass Massacre or Israel’s unforgivable behaviour at Kafr Kassem on the eve of the 1956 Suez Campaign.
It was also most shocking to discover how much the Nazis learned from the Turks’ evil work in Armenia and therefore profoundly unsettling to know that earlier this year, the Knesset still refused to acknowledge that what happened was genocide.
So as I pondered atrocity piled upon atrocity; read wicked schoolyard Holocaust jokes that would otherwise have author, D R Bell prosecuted for spreading hate, I finally began to understand why - media personnel aside - in December 1963 the trial of Auschwitz criminals at Frankfurt am Main could “not compete with a new British group called the Beatles. Or with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor getting married”.
Ah, yes, I remember them well!
D R Bell’s Eleos is at once a compelling and troubling yarn overflowing with inconvenient, unimaginable truths writ huge. To suggest that to read the story’s final words is, all differences considered, like the death of a small world, makes it something special.
Now all that’s left is to wonder how the fast shrinking community of real-life survivors will react. Let’s see.
** Eleos: A Book of Trials and Secrets is available from Amazon in Kindle ($2.99) and Paperback ($12.99).
UPDATE:
It was also most shocking to discover how much the Nazis learned from the Turks’ evil work in Armenia and therefore profoundly unsettling to know that earlier this year, the Knesset still refused to acknowledge that what happened was genocide.
So as I pondered atrocity piled upon atrocity; read wicked schoolyard Holocaust jokes that would otherwise have author, D R Bell prosecuted for spreading hate, I finally began to understand why - media personnel aside - in December 1963 the trial of Auschwitz criminals at Frankfurt am Main could “not compete with a new British group called the Beatles. Or with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor getting married”.
Ah, yes, I remember them well!
D R Bell’s Eleos is at once a compelling and troubling yarn overflowing with inconvenient, unimaginable truths writ huge. To suggest that to read the story’s final words is, all differences considered, like the death of a small world, makes it something special.
Now all that’s left is to wonder how the fast shrinking community of real-life survivors will react. Let’s see.
** Eleos: A Book of Trials and Secrets is available from Amazon in Kindle ($2.99) and Paperback ($12.99).
UPDATE:
Eleos is free to download December 28-30 from www.amazon.com/dp/B07JMC4NW7
Natalie Wood (25 December 2018)
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